Best Food Writing 2014 Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE

  Best Food Writing

  SERIES

  “Longtime editor Hughes once again compiles a tasty collection of culinary essays for those who love to eat, cook and read about food . . . A literary trek across the culinary landscape pairing bountiful delights with plenty of substantive tidbits.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “What is so great about this annual series is that editor Holly Hughes curates articles that likely never crossed your desk, even if you’re an avid reader of food content. Nearly every piece selected is worth your time.” —The Huffington Post

  “This latest annual anthology of short writings reveals a nation sorely conflicted about food’s nutritional benefits versus the sheer sensual pleasures of the table.” —Booklist

  “The essays are thought-provoking and moving . . . This is an absolutely terrific and engaging book . . . There is enough variety, like a box of chocolates, that one can poke around the book looking for the one with caramel and find it.” —New York Journal of Books

  “A top-notch collection, Hughes brings together a wonderful mix that is sure to please the foodie in all of us.” —San Francisco Book Review

  “This collection will leave you both chuckling and pondering, and perhaps a little wiser about the American food scene.” —Taste for Life

  “Not just for foodies! This will delight anyone who enjoys the pleasures of a good read and a good meal. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal

  “There’s a mess of vital, provocative, funny and tender stuff . . . in these pages.” —USA Today

  “An exceptional collection worth revisiting, this will be a surefire hit with epicureans and cooks.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “If you’re looking to find new authors and voices about food, there’s an abundance to chew on here.” —Tampa Tribune

  “Fascinating to read now, this book will also be interesting to pick up a year from now, or ten years from now.” —Popmatters.com

  “Some of these stories can make you burn with a need to taste what they’re writing about.” —Los Angeles Times

  “This is a book worth devouring.” —Sacramento Bee

  “The cream of the crop of food writing compilations.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

  “The book captures the gastronomic zeitgeist in a broad range of essays.” —San Jose Mercury News

  “There are a few recipes among the stories, but mostly it’s just delicious tales about eating out, cooking at home and even the politics surrounding the food on our plates.” —Spokesman-Review

  “The next best thing to eating there is.” —New York Metro

  “Stories for connoisseurs, celebrations of the specialized, the odd, or simply the excellent.”—Entertainment Weekly

  “Spans the globe and palate.”—Houston Chronicle

  “The perfect gift for the literate food lover.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

  ALSO EDITED BY HOLLY HUGHES

  Best Food Writing 2013

  Best Food Writing 2012

  Best Food Writing 2011

  Best Food Writing 2010

  Best Food Writing 2009

  Best Food Writing 2008

  Best Food Writing 2007

  Best Food Writing 2006

  Best Food Writing 2005

  Best Food Writing 2004

  Best Food Writing 2003

  Best Food Writing 2002

  Best Food Writing 2001

  Best Food Writing 2000

  ALSO BY HOLLY HUGHES

  Frommer’s 500 Places for Food and Wine Lovers

  Frommer’s New York City with Kids

  Frommer’s 500 Places to Take the Kids Before They Grow Up

  Copyright © 2014 by Holly Hughes

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information, address Da Capo Press, 44 Farnsworth Street, 3rd Floor, Boston, MA 02210.

  Set in 10 point Bembo BQ by the Perseus Books Group

  Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

  First Da Capo Press edition 2014

  ISBN: 978-0-7382-1792-5 (e-book)

  Published by Da Capo Press

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  www.dacapopress.com

  Note: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. This book is intended only as an informative guide for those wishing to know more about health issues. In no way is this book intended to replace, countermand, or conflict with the advice given to you by your own physician. The ultimate decision concerning care should be made between you and your doctor. We strongly recommend you follow his or her advice. Information in this book is general and is offered with no guarantees on the part of the authors or Da Capo Press. The authors and publisher disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

  Da Capo Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA, 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  THE WAY WE EAT NOW

  Age of Innocence, From Saveur

  By Jay Rayner

  Are Big Flavors Destroying the American Palate?, From Food & Wine

  By Kate Krader

  A Toast Story, From Pacific Standard

  By John Gravois

  Five Things I Will Not Eat, From CivilEats.com

  By Barry Estabrook

  Baconomics 101, From The Tastemakers

  By David Sax

  The Right to Eat, From Alimentum

  By JT Torres

  A TABLE FOR EVERYONE

  America, Your Food Is So Gay, From Lucky Peach

  By John Birdsall

  Debts of Pleasure, From the Oxford American

  By John T. Edge

  The Dignity of Chocolate, From Edible Vancouver

  By Eagranie Yuh

  The Indulgence of Pickled Baloney, From Gravy

  By Silas House

  Austerity Measures, From SF Weekly

  By Anna Roth

  Waiting for the 8th, From the Washington Post

  By Eli Saslow

  BACK TO BASICS

  A Sort of Chicken That We Call Fish, From PoorMansFeast.com

  By Elissa Altman

  Forget the Clock, Remember Your Food, From Eat Your Vegetables: Bold Recipes for the Single Cook

  By Joe Yonan

  Meals from a Hunter, From the Minneapolis Star Tribune

  By Steve Hoffman

  The Man Machine, From Fool

  By Oliver Strand

  Cooking as the Cornerstone of a Sustainable Food System, From CivilEats.com

  By Kim O’Donnel

  How to Boil Water, From Eatthelove.com

  By Irvin Lin

  The Lions of Bangkok Street Food, From RoadsAndKingdoms.com

  By Matt Goulding

  How to Cook a Turkey, From TheDinnerFiles.com

  By Molly Watson

  HOME COOKING

  And Baby Makes Free-for-All, From Bon Appétit

  By Adam Sachs

  A French-ish Salad to Feed an Expanding Household

  Sense of Self, From FoodThinker.com

  By Erin Byers Murray

  The Utley Family Angel Food Cake

  Creamy Lemon Glaze


  The Ghosts of Cakes Past, From ModernSpice.com

  By Monica Bhide

  Bread and Women, From The New Yorker

  By Adam Gopnik

  The Science of the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies, From Serious Eats

  By J. Kenji López-Alt

  The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie

  How to Cook Chicken Cutlets, and Give Yourself a Reason to Keep Living, From DeadSpin.com

  By Albert Burneko

  Smelted, From FullGrownPeople.com

  By Sara Bir

  STOCKING THE PANTRY

  A Green Movement, From Dark Rye

  By Jane Black

  The 16.9 Carrot, From The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food

  By Dan Barber

  Monsanto Is Going Organic in a Quest for the Perfect Veggie, From Wired

  By Ben Paynter

  The Flavor Man, From Edible Cleveland

  By Laura Taxel

  Cauliflower Tomato Tarka

  Yellow Dutch, From Edible Philly

  By Rick Nichols

  The Forgotten Harvest, From Garden & Gun

  By Jack Hitt

  SOMEONE’S IN THE KITCHEN

  The Leading Light of Pastry, From Food & Wine

  By Alex Halberstadt

  Cheapskates, From Edible San Francisco

  By Sarah Henry

  Sherry Yard’s Sweet Independence, From LA Weekly

  By Besha Rodell

  A Day on Long Island with Alex Lee, From Lucky Peach

  By Francis Lam

  Savoring the Now, From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  By John Kessler

  The Tao of Bianco, From Edible Baja Arizona

  By Dave Mondy

  PERSONAL TASTES

  Familiarity Breeds Content, From the New York Times

  By Frank Bruni

  Everyman’s Fish, From Saveur

  By Tom Carson

  The Cheese Toast Incident, From FoodForTheThoughtless.com

  By Michael Procopio

  Because I Can, From Leite’s Culinaria

  By David Leite

  Homemade Ketchup

  Solitary Man, From Saveur

  By Josh Ozersky

  Tomato Pie, From Tin House

  By Ann Hood

  Laurie Colwin’s Tomato Pie

  EXTREME EATING

  The Invasivore’s Dilemma, From Outside Magazine

  By Rowan Jacobsen

  Learning How to Taste, From Edible: An Adventure into the World of Eating Insects and the Last Great Hope to Save the Planet

  By Daniella Martin

  Seven Bald Men and a Kumquat Tree, From Gastronomica

  By Amy Gentry

  Fixed Menu, From Lucky Peach

  By Kevin Pang

  Last Meals, From Lapham’s Quarterly

  By Brent Cunningham

  Recipe Index

  Permissions Acknowledgments

  About the Editor

  INTRODUCTION

  Sugar. Vanilla. Chocolate. Sure, we all know they taste good. But what was even more important last winter was how good they smelled.

  It was one of the hospice volunteers’ main duties: To bake a nonstop supply of chocolate chip cookies—not only for the patients, but also for the heart-sore family and friends at their bedsides. So what if the volunteers were scooping premade industrial batter out of plastic tubs bought in bulk from Costco? These weren’t artisanal chocolate chip cookies, not gourmet confections, and they didn’t need to be. They were literally “to die for” (a term I’ll never again use lightly).

  After weeks in the Lysol-bedpan aroma of hospitals and nursing homes, that sugar-vanilla scent helped make the hospice a haven of peace for my nieces, my sister, and me. No more beeping machines and intercoms, no more rattling carts, no more nutritionists and physical therapists trying to strong-arm my brother into “getting better.” The freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies were the final touch, the stroke of genius that made it all feel homey and natural and honest.

  Granted, it wasn’t just the cookies that made us (okay, mostly me) pack on a collective 15 pounds that month. We couldn’t even walk outdoors, not with snow banked up to the windowsills by a relentless series of blizzards, so in those agonizing weeks of waiting, hoping, denying, the necessity of eating provided our only escape. We desperately snatched opportunities to run out into the snow for take-out food—first dashing to the hospital’s sad fast-food court, later grabbing pallid heat-and-eats from a Stop & Shop near the nursing home. At last, it seemed like we’d hit a gustatory jackpot when we discovered near the hospice a Whole Foods, a Panera café, AND a Bertucci’s. (Whoo-hoo!) What relief it was when one of the sons-in-law burst back indoors, cheeks red from the cold, loaded down with plastic bags of dinner. We craved the caloric buzz of starches and fats—until we craved salads even more. (With chocolate-chip cookies for dessert, of course.) Comfort food, indeed.

  The weekday afternoon shifts were mine. I sat at my brother’s bedside as he dozed, working my way through stacks of magazines and books, looking for this year’s Best Food Writing contenders. My brother was always a loyal BFW fan, buying multiple copies as presents for everyone he knew, and often slipping into bookstores (yes, brick and mortar bookstores—remember those?) to make sure they kept the book in stock. Now, drifting in and out of consciousness—pain meds wearing off, not yet ready for the next dose—he would ask what I was reading, hoping to distract himself from the pain.

  Maybe it was those circumstances that gave me less patience than ever for fluffy food writing or glossy promotional hype—though admittedly, in the 15 years I’ve been editing this collection, I’ve never much liked the slick stuff, always focusing rather on more thoughtful, meaty pieces. But this year it particularly struck me how much food writing has matured lately, giving me a wealth of incisive, witty, in-depth, and provocative material to sift through.

  How pleased I was to discover clear-eyed writers who define This Year in Food without succumbing to fads and buzz. Our opening section, “The Way We Eat Now,” is full of balanced views on 2014’s food trends, from $4 toast (John Gravois’s “A Toast Story,” page 11) to hot-’n’-spicy everything (Kate Krader, “Are Big Flavors Destroying America’s Palate?,” page 7) to bacon-mania (David Sax, “Baconomics 101,” page 26). At the other end, we close with writers covering food phenomena so out-there, they may never even turn into trends: a chef trying to put invasive species on the menu (Rowan Jacobsen, page 306), an underground of insect-eating gourmets (Daniella Martin, page 317), or a foraging chef’s mind-blowing inventiveness (Amy Gentry, page 326). Lest we get too caught up in the latest fashions, other writers put our gourmet preoccupations into historical context—Jay Rayner’s memory of his first American foods (page 2), Tom Carson’s memory of tuna fish sandwiches (page 277), Ann Hood’s ode to Laurie Colwin’s tomato pie recipe (page 296).

  I also hit a mother lode of wonderful pieces questioning the equal rights of America’s food conversation—a topic that felt especially important to me, sharing my brother’s concern for social justice (as a Methodist minister, that was always a given for him). These meditations on culinary minorities come together in a new section titled A Table for Everyone (starts on page 41). It must also have been my non-foodie brother’s joy in honest real food (at least until chemo killed his appetite) that gave me special appreciation for the writers featured in another new section, Back to Basics—a hunter simply cooking his day’s kill (Steve Hoffman, page 93), a coffee obsessive’s epiphany on how little new-fangled gear matters (Oliver Strand, page 97), or an anti-gourmet foray into Asian street food (Matt Goulding, page 112).

  Being with my brother—a consummate people person—helped remind me that it always comes back to people stories. Of course those have played a prominent part in Best Food Writing ever since the first edition in 2000, especially with the chef profiles that populate the section Someone’s in the Kitchen (starts on page 219). A far cry from celebrity-chef puff piec
es, these are snapshots of restaurant cooks from all over the country, at all stages of their careers, from Alex Halberstadt’s portrait of the hip King of Cronuts™ (page 220) to John Kessler’s bittersweet portrait of a young chef facing mortality (page 252) to Dave Mondy’s look at an artisanal pizzamaker taking a step he never thought he’d take (page 264). And as the locavore movement has expanded the food stage, more artisans, farmers and suppliers are given their rightful place alongside chefs as essential players. In this year’s Stocking the Pantry section (starts on page 179), you’ll find a gallery of colorful individuals who make the ingredients we cook with. On top of that, I found a bumper crop of writers bringing their family stories into their cooking (Elissa Altman, page 80; Adam Sachs, page 124; Erin Byers Murray, page 128; Adam Gopnik, page 138; Sarah Bir, page 172; Josh Ozersky, page 292).

  More than anything else, in those hospital-haunted days we needed to laugh. I’ve always tried to include a healthy dose of humor in each year’s Best Food Writing, and this year is no exception. There’s Irvin Lin’s tongue-in-cheek “How to Boil Water” (page 108), Molly Watson’s exasperated “How to Cook a Turkey” (page 119) or Albert Burneko’s ranting “How to Cook Chicken Cutlets” (page 166)—a trio of how-tos that are anything but Betty Crockeresque. Humor keeps us all honest, as Michael Procopio (“The Cheese Toast Incident,” page 281) and David Leite (“Because I Can,” page 286) prove yet again.

  As I read bits of these stories out loud to distract my brother, I think we both knew he’d never see this year’s edition. In fact, he died in March, his suffering finally over. But as I went on reading throughout the spring, I kept judging everything with him in mind. He was my Ideal Reader in many ways—not a fussy cook or a food snob, but fascinated by the interplay between the way we eat and our personal relationships, our sense of self, and even our role as stewards of this planet.

  And somehow, that perspective felt just right to me. For at its best, isn’t food writing just another lens through which to view the human condition? In a season of grief and eventual acceptance, pondering about food—and pondering it deeply—offered its own path of healing and comfort.

  And if there’s a chocolate-chip cookie (or two or three) involved, even better.

  The Way We Eat Now